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By Root 1041 0

He ordered wine that tasted sour on her tongue, telling her, “You will come to like it,” and so she made herself like the wine right away. She was nothing like the wives of his friends, the kind of women who went abroad and bumped into each other while shopping at Harrods, and she held her breath waiting for Obiora to realize this and leave her. But the months passed and he had her siblings enrolled in school and he introduced her to his friends at the boat club and he moved her out of the self-contained in Ojota and into a real flat with a balcony in Ikeja. When he asked if she would marry him, she thought how unnecessary it was, his asking, since she would have been happy simply to be told.

Nkem feels a fierce possessiveness now, imagining this girl locked in Obiora’s arms, on their bed. She puts the phone down, tells Amaechi she will be right back, and drives to Wal-greens to buy a carton of texturizer. Back in the car, she turns the light on and stares at the carton, at the picture of the women with tightly curled hair.

Nkem watches Amaechi slice potatoes, watches the thin skin descend in a translucent brown spiral.

“Be careful. You are peeling it so close,” she says.

“My mother used to rub yam peel on my skin if I took away too much yam with the peel. It itched for days,” Amaechi says with a short laugh. She is cutting the potatoes into quarters. Back home, she would have used yams for the ji akwukwo pottage, but here there are hardly any yams at the African store—real African yams, not the fibrous potatoes the American supermarkets sell as yams. Imitation yams, Nkem thinks, and smiles. She has never told Amaechi how similar their childhoods were. Her mother may not have rubbed yam peels on her skin, but then there were hardly any yams. Instead, there was improvised food. She remembers how her mother plucked plant leaves that nobody else ate and made a soup with them, insisting they were edible. They always tasted, to Nkem, like urine, because she would see the neighborhood boys urinating on the stems of those plants.

“Do you want me to use the spinach or the dried onugbu, madam?” Amaechi asks. She always asks, when Nkem sits in as she cooks. Do you want me to use the red onion or the white? Beef broth or chicken?

“Use whichever you like,” Nkem says. She does not miss the look Amaechi darts her. Usually Nkem will say use that or use this. Now she wonders why they go through the charade, who they are trying to fool; they both know that Amaechi is much better in the kitchen than she is.

Nkem watches as Amaechi washes the spinach in the sink, the vigor in Amaechi’s shoulders, the wide solid hips. She remembers the shy, eager sixteen-year-old Obiora brought to America, who for months remained fascinated by the dishwasher. Obiora had employed Amaechi’s father as a driver, bought him his own motorcycle and said Amaechi’s parents had embarrassed him, kneeling down on the dirt to thank him, clutching his legs.

Amaechi is shaking the colander full of spinach leaves when Nkem says, “Your oga Obiora has a girlfriend who has moved into the house in Lagos.”

Amaechi drops the colander into the sink. “Madam?”

“You heard me,” Nkem says. She and Amaechi talk about which Rugrats character the children mimic best, how Uncle Ben’s is better than basmati for jollof rice, how American children talk to elders as if they were their equals. But they have never talked about Obiora except to discuss what he will eat, or how to launder his shirts, when he visits.

“How do you know, madam?” Amaechi asks finally, turning around to look at Nkem.

“My friend Ijemamaka called and told me. She just got back from Nigeria.”

Amaechi is staring at Nkem boldly, as though challenging her to take back her words. “But madam—is she sure?”

“I am sure she would not lie to me about something like that,” Nkem says, leaning back on her chair. She feels ridiculous. To think that she is affirming that her husband’s girlfriend has moved into her home. Perhaps she should doubt it; she should remember Ijemamaka’s brittle envy, the way Ijemamaka always has